“Weird,” Jason said. “I don’t have any mana either. Oh, wait. when I focused on the Mana portion of my character screen it said this will not unlock until I have achieved level 3. Otherwise I have 30 attack and 600 hit points as well. My resistance to Dark is at 100 and I’m immune to Holy. All the rest of my resistances are at 0. But my intelligence went up +2 as a High Elf.”
“Man I tell you, Warrior is where it is at!” Wayne exclaimed. “I’ve got 100 attack and 1300 hit points! I got a +1 to Strength and +2 to Constitution for being a Barbarian. And then I got Crit strike for all weapons as well from level 1 for being a Warrior!”
“That is wicked bro! And resistances at 0 too?” Dan asked.
“Ummm, no. Apparently Barbarians are a bit superstitious. Literally says that when I focus on the Dark and Holy resistances on my screen. So I have -15 Dark and -15 Holy. But the rest are at 0. I also have a movement speed of 11. Oh, and like Alex said before, I can’t see anything at night.”
“So that just leaves me,” Dan said. “Well I didn’t get any bonuses to Strength or Constitution so my attack and hit points are the same as Alex. As a Wood Elf I did get a +2 to Agility. My resistances are all at 0. But with Wood Elf I also got a racial hit that “dark” alignment encounters will have increased hostility toward Wood Elfs. Means I’m getting more aggro. As a Ranger I also get the ability to do Crit Strike with arrows from Level 1. “
I went back into my inventory and looked at my weapon. It was a simple “Rusted Dagger” with an attack modifier of 2. I wasn’t sure this thing could cut through fruit, let alone bunnies, but I was going to find out. “What does everyone have as weapons?”
“Rusted War Hammer,” said Wayne.
“Rusted Mace,” Jason said next.
“Recruit’s Bow and a Quiver of Recruit Arrows,” Dan said. “The Bow gives a modifier of 1 and the arrows give a modifier of 1 as well. And the bow has a range of 15 and the arrows have a range of 0.”
“My mace has a modifier of 2 as well,” Jason explained.
“Guess because I’m the tank mine has a modifier of 3. But it is also two handed so I couldn’t use a shield like Jason…sorry, Allister could,” Wayne finished.
“Alright, let’s equip these weapons and make our way over to the front gate. Before we go accept the quest there is still something I want to check out, if you guys don’t mind.”
“Nah, Alex. So far you are running this ship just fine. I bet it will be awhile before people learn the trick with the blinking. I can see over by the gate people waving their hands around,” Wayne said.
Once I equipped my dagger, my Attack went from 60 to 80. Which made sense with the modifier being a “2” for the dagger. The dagger also had a speed of 1. I figured this indicated how quickly I could swing my blade. Wayne’s hammer was at 1.3. In the future, with better weapons I expected to be swinging with much faster speeds. This is why Rogues were the damage dealers. We were almost ready to wreak havoc on this world. But there was still one more thing I wanted to test.
* * *
“You want me to attack something Alex, but you don’t want me to kill it?” Wayne asked.
“That’s right Wayne.”
“And then you want me to run away from it like a scared little girl?”
“Well I wouldn’t say run away. More like a tactical retreat for the sake of gathering intelligence,” I replied.
“It’s a bunny rabbit dude. I can kill it and bring back the intelligence!”
“Wayne, I am not questioning your abilities here. Seriously, this is just for the sake of figuring out what our regeneration is. You see,” and here I decided to play up to Wayne’s warrior mentality, “I’m worried that if you do attack it full on, you won’t even get hurt enough for us to see how long it takes to regen.”
“Alright, that makes sense. I’ll head over there now and attack one. You want me to just let it hit me for a bit and then run it past the guards and come back here?” Wayne asked.
We were back sitting just inside the gate, near the square. We would only need to do this once, and then we could head on out. I also wanted to see just how hard these wee little rabbits hit for. This was a game after all, and I think Wayne was going to be in for a bit of a surprise.
It wasn’t thirty seconds before we started seeing Wayne’s life bar start to go down. It wasn’t fast but it certainly wasn’t slow either. And then it started to speed up. Ten seconds later Wayne came running into the square heading for us.
“Son of a bitch! Those things hit like trucks man! And who the fuck ever heard of bunny venom?” Wayne yelled!
Others around the square started to laugh, and another Barbarian shouted, “Fuckin too right man! We need to make some bunny stew!”
It appeared that others had encountered the truck like hitting bunnies earlier on. But now was not the time to laugh at Wayne. That would come later. Now was the time to test regeneration.
“How fast is your life going down now?” I asked.
“This venom is taking off 10 points a tick. It’s not much but if it lasts forever it will kill me without a cure,” Wayne answered.
A tick was a length of time for either mana or hit points to regenerate or for a poison to deplete a portion of your hit points or mana. One tick in Resurgence was 5 seconds. A minute later and the poison disappeared from Wayne. He was now at 700 hps. The bunny had done a number on him.
“Ok, I want you to stay still and tell me how many hit points you regain from standing.” I said.
After 20 seconds Wayne replied, “Looks like I get three hit points for every tick while standing. Let me try sitting.” After another 20 seconds he said, “Ok, looks like I get 8 per tick while sitting. So if Wayne were to go down to nearly 0 hit points, our team would need to sit around for almost 10 minutes for him to regenerate. That would make the grinding very slow. Wayne was also able to look back through his logs and see that the poison lasted for one minute. Meaning it would take 120 hit points from Wayne no matter what.
The last order of business was for us to create an attack icon in our interfaces that would allow us to engage the mob. I asked Wayne what he had done.
“Well mostly I just ran up to it. It just attacked me. Definitely designed to aggro anyone that gets too close of a certain level. And I didn’t attack because I knew you were worried that I would crush it.” I let Wayne have this moment since we both knew he got his ass handed to him by a bunny rabbit.
We played with the interface a bit until we realized that we needed to focus on the item we wanted to select, blinked, and then focused on the icon slot we wanted it to go into at the bottom of the screen. Alternatively, we could have used our hand to move the icon by “tapping” it with our finger. But this group was trying to hone the hands off approach. I also wanted to make sure we didn’t all start targeting different mobs if more than one was engaged. At this point in our leveling we would probably just hoof it, but better to learn good practices now.
But first, Dan had been eerily silent for a while. And this scared me more than anything.
“Hey there TC, what you doing?” I asked.
“Reading bro, there is a manual,” he replied.
“What part are you reading?” I asked. I was now far more interested.
“I’ve been going through all the icons man, trying to figure out what they all mean. I came across the manual. So I’m just reading it,” Dan responded.
“Right. I get that. But what part are you reading?” I asked again.
“Dude. Dummy. All of it. Photo Memory remember?”
“As much as it pains me to say this, and stop shaking your head Jas…I mean Allister, but we are going to need to get a tutorial from Dan later. For now, how do I make sure that we are all hitting the same thing? How do we make sure we are just fighting whatever Wayne is fighting?”
“It’s pretty ingenious bro. And once we get more skills, this thing is really going to take off. The AI in this game has to be totally sick, and the sensors aro
und our noggin are doing way more than we realize. But whatever. In order to do that we need to do some vocalization. It says it here in the manual. But other places where we have found ways to use our eyes, it doesn’t say that. So I am looking out specifically for those things where we do so we don’t waste our time blinking all day.” My head hurt just trying to process everything Dan just said.
“Great. So what do we do?”
“Open the attack icon on your screen. Then say ‘insert command.’ Once you do that a little window will pop open. For pick up groups you can just say ‘Follow attack of slot 1,’ which is the first dude in your group. It doesn’t matter when people join the group, you can move their slots around in your personal interface. Pretty ingenious. But in our case, you can actually say ‘Follow attack of Naugha’ and never have to worry about that.”
I had to agree, that actually was pretty bad ass. And we were ready now to see how this all worked out. First stop was the quest giver in the square. I figured the bunnies out front could be the first step to the quest, and I didn’t want to waste time killing when we could be questing. This had been months in the making, but we were finally going to start our first adventure!
CHAPTER 9
“Jesus Christ man! Run for the guards! Run, run run!” Dan yelled.
What we were running from was possibly the least successful first pull in the history of gaming. Without CC and heals, we were planning on just beating whatever mobs we came across until Jason and Dan got spells. But in order to establish our hierarchy, we sent Dan out for the pull. And he did pull. Only I think it was all of them.
“Hide your children! The nightmare bunny express is coming to town! INCOMING!” Dan was yelling at the top of his lungs as he sprinted toward the gate.
We all made it safe and sound, and the area outside the gate would be cleared of bunnies for a bit after the guards slaughtered what looked like dozens of them. Dan was panting on the ground, out of breath. I saw this as a learning point if nothing else.
“Dan, what is your vitality at?” I asked.
“It’s good man, I’ve got lots of Agility, so I didn’t eat up too much. I could have run for a bit longer.”
“Good to know!” I responded.
* * *
What should have been a simple beginning to what was a simple quest obviously hadn’t started that way. Before going out to see Dan’s rendition of the Bunny Train That Could, we had stopped by the quest giver at the center of town. His title said Sir Northampton Kenyon.
“Good day to you Sir Kenyon,” Jason began.
“Ah, good High-Elf, how are you on this fine day? Have you and your band of adventurers come to answer the call?” The Knight asked.
“Yes, Sir Kenyon we wish to answer the call,” Jason responded.
“While I am certain you speak for yourself good Elf, I am afraid you cannot speak for the rest of your friends as you are not the leader of this merry band. Perhaps your leader could request the same.” Simple point to note, but an important one. For a group quest the group leader needed to trigger the acceptance of the quest. I stepped forward and went through the same motions as Jason.
“I admire your bravado, but his Highness does not have a need for more mouths to feed that cannot produce results. There will be a challenge of sorts that you each must pass in order to continue toward raising the fame of your name throughout the lands of Tholtos. The first step is an easy one. Beyond these walls you will find a clearing where the fleetest of creatures scamper to and fro. Do not be fooled. These are vile beasts with a venom that could incapacitate or kill a child. Slaughter these beasts and return to me when you have completed the job.”
A quest window appeared in my screen and I saw that I needed to kill ten bunnies before I could return to Sir Kenyon. However, once I hit the accept button the new number was a group number. And we had to kill forty bunnies. This was an easy way to ensure that one did not get their kill count and leave before the rest of the group succeeded in attaining their goals as well. Once we had all accepted, and were enveloped by the same shimmering light we had seen earlier, we made for the front gate where our journey would begin.
* * *
“So you thought, what, that you would just get this done and over with and pull all forty at the same time?” I asked a bit exasperated.
Dan laughed and said, “Nah man, believe it or not, I totally had a plan. See, I went and aggro’ed my first rabbit, and then had him attacking me for a bit. With my Agility I was able to avoid a few of its hits. Then I ran around and collected a whole bunch more mobs. Then ran to the guards,” he explained.
“And the point of that was?” Wayne asked.
“I know exactly where that first rabbit came from, bro. Now when it respawns I will be able to bring it, and only it, for our first fight. The others won’t respawn before I am able to grab it and bring it back. I can’t do this every time, but at least for our first kill we will get to do it as a single mob,” Dan said.
We all looked at each other and it was Jason, who grudgingly said, “Damn it Dan! That’s brilliant. I hate that you have these moments of total awesomeness.”
Dan beamed from Jason’s praise. Wayne and I just laughed. Dan headed back out to the field to get ready for the respawn of the rabbit and to bring our first mob to kill as a group. “Look sharp everyone. Obviously there won’t be any heals coming. Wayne establishes aggro and after he engages for five seconds we will jump in. If the rabbit turns to attack you just stop attacking. Don’t run. Give Wayne a chance to reestablish aggro,” I ordered.
Wayne asked, “How about you give me 10 seconds Alex, since this Rusted War Hammer is a little slow?”
“Sounds good Wayne. Now everyone get ready, here comes Dan.”
“The group function on this game is really cool man. Even out there in the field I could hear your orders Alex. Oh yeah, incoming!” Dan yelled.
Dan ran past Wayne and brought the rabbit immediately into his line of sight. Wayne didn’t waste any time and swung his hammer at the rabbit. It immediately stopped in front of Wayne and began attacking me. I had seen the rabbits running around but this was the first time I had seen one up close. I had focused on the rabbit and my RAC designated it as my target. Above its head was the name Venomous Bunny Rabbit and the name was shaded blue. This meant that the mob was probably a level or two above my own, so level 2 or 3. I was guessing here, but I was figuring AltCon was using a standard means for classifying mobs by color code. Green was at least two levels below you, white was at your level, blue was one or two levels above you, yellow was three or four, and red was five and above. After 10 seconds, with the rabbit’s hit points slightly going down and Wayne’s descending a bit faster, Wayne made the call. “Engage!”
Dan, Jason, and I went behind the Venomous Bunny Rabbit and began swinging our weapons. I only had the one dagger, Jason had his mace, and Dan was slightly behind us shooting arrows. Each of my strikes was doing 5-10 damage. But the rabbit’s hit points were going down at a much faster rate. After just 15 more seconds, the rabbit died and we all cheered. We must have looked like complete idiots jumping around and high fiving each other around a rabbit corpse. “The honor is yours Alex,” Jason said.
As the leader of the group I was also the master looter for each mob. This meant I would inspect the rabbit to see if it had any loot and then distribute properly. I didn’t expect much on these rabbits given their low level. Wanting to avoid actually touching the thing, what with how realistic the game made the sense of touch, I just focused on the rabbit and blinked. My intuition was right and the loot screen popped up. I received one copper piece, silly rabbit must have swallowed that, and nothing else. The counter on my quest bar now read 1/40 for rabbits killed. I had also earned 5% experience. At the lower levels getting experience was fast. It wasn’t until you passed lvl 10 or so in most games that you really had to grind to get through levels.
“We are rich gentlemen! The rabbit had one copper piece cheeked. Hopefully
we find three more so I can distribute our spoils properly! How many hit points did you lose Wayne?” I asked.
“Not too bad. My base is 1300 hit points and I am at 1178 now. If we can maintain single pulls I can do this for a while before I need to rest,” Wayne answered.
“Yeah, about that. Single pulls aren’t going to be so easy now. But I will do my best without having any snare. TheClaw warns you though, two are likely incoming. If I get three, I will run for the guards,” Dan said.
“In the meantime, I will take advantage of every break by sitting and regening. But go whenever you are ready Dan,” Wayne said.
Now would be the time where our earlier efforts would come in to play. There wasn’t a great amount of synchronicity that our group needed with two mobs, but we wanted to make sure that we engaged only the mob Wayne was fighting, but only after he had established aggro on both. After twenty seconds we heard Dan yelling, “Incoming, two baddies!”
Wayne stood up and got into the same position. This time, Dan had to stand next to him to give Wayne time to get aggro and he lost a good ten percent of hit points while waiting. But once Wayne had established aggro on both, he called for our party to engage, and I again activated my “Follow attack of Naugha” button and began hitting the rabbit. After a few seconds I landed my first Critical Strike and took 20 points off the mob. The wee bunny didn’t like this much and he immediately turned on me and began slicing into my legs. Being at the back side of the rabbit I hadn’t noticed that despite looking cute and fluffy, it had razor sharp teeth and a tinge of red on the eyes. Way to go a little psycho for the beginners AltCon.
Following my own instructions, I immediately stopped attacking by activating my second icon, “Cease Attack.” I suggested to everyone, since this may occur in these early fights, that everyone make such a button. I was happy that I did. The rabbit ripped into me for only a few seconds before Wayne reestablished aggro, and I waited another five seconds before attacking again. Once the first bunny was dead, and Wayne was down a total of 250 hit points, we started in on the second rabbit. This one had been attacking Wayne for a while and building its aggro against him. My two Critical Strikes did not draw aggro this time.
Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 Page 6
